Vladimir Sergeyevich Solovyov[1] (Russian: Влади́мир Серге́евич Соловьёв; January 28 [O.S. January 16] 1853 – August 13 [O.S. July 31] 1900) was a Russianphilosopher, theologian, poet, pamphleteer and literary critic, who played a significant role in the development of Russian philosophy and poetry at the end of the 19th century and in the spiritual renaissance of the early 20th century.

Solovyov never married or had children, but he pursued idealized relationships as immortalized in his spiritual love-poetry, including with two women named Sophia.[7] He rebuffed the advances of mystic Anna Schmidt, who claimed to be his divine partner.

Solovyov died an apparently homeless pauper in 1900, leaving his brother Mikhail Sergeevich and several colleagues to defend and promote his intellectual legacy.[8]

Solovyov described his encounters with the entity Sophia in his works, Three Encounters and Lectures on Godmanhood among others. Solovyov's fusion was driven by the desire to reconcile and or unite with Orthodox Christianity these various traditions via the Russian Slavophiles' concept of sobornost. His Russian religious philosophy had a very strong impact on the Russian Symbolist art movements of his time.[12] Solovyov's teachings on Sophia, conceived as the merciful unifying feminine wisdom of God comparable to the Hebrew Shekinah or various goddess traditions,[13] have been deemed a heresy by ROCOR and as unsound and unorthodox by the Patriarchate of Moscow.[14]

Solovyov sought to create a philosophy that could through his system of logic or reason reconcile all bodies of knowledge or disciplines of thought, and fuse all conflicting concepts into a single system. The central component of this complete philosophic reconciliation was the RussianSlavophile concept of sobornost (organic or Spontaneous order through integration; which is related to the Russian word for 'catholic'). Solovyov sought to find and validate common ground – or where conflicts found common ground – and by focusing on this common ground to establish absolute unity and or integral[15] fusion of opposing ideas and / or peoples.[16]

"As long as the dark foundation of our nature, grim in its all-encompassing egoism, mad in its drive to make that egoism into reality, to devour everything and to define everything by itself, as long as that foundation is visible, as long as this truly original sin exists within us, we have no business here and there is no logical answer to our existence. Imagine a group of people who are all blind, deaf and slightly demented and suddenly someone in the crowd asks, "What are we to do?"... The only possible answer is "Look for a cure". Until you are cured, there is nothing you can do. And since you don't believe you are sick, there can be no cure."

"But if the faith communicated by the Church to Christian humanity is a living faith, and if the grace of the sacraments is an effectual grace, the resultant union of the divine and the human cannot be limited to the special domain of religion, but must extend to all Man's common relationships and must regenerate and transform his social and political life."[17]

^Zouboff, Peter, Solovyov on Godmanhood: Solovyov’s Lectures on Godmanhood Harmon Printing House: Poughkeepsie, New York, 1944; see Czeslaw Milosz's introduction to Solovyov’s War, Progress and the End of History. Lindisfarne Press: Hudson, New York 1990.

Mrówczyński-Van Allen, Artur. Between the Icon and the idol. The Human Person and the Modern State in Russian Literature and Thought - Chaadayev, Soloviev, Grossman (Cascade Books, /Theopolitical Visions/, Eugene, Or., 2013).